> The important thing to remember here is that our kids have opted in for all these activities. We only do what they are interested in. And this is what makes unschooling beautiful.
This is the part that’s scary due to selective bias. I had no clue whatsoever about most things I learnt in school until I uhmm learned them.
If I were given a choice whether to spend hours learning integral calculus or partial differential equations, I’d have most certainly said no! But, at the end of it I realised they were the foundations for something greater - projectile calculations with integral calculus.
Education teaches one to think. Some level of wild walks in the subject is necessary in my opinion.
School says "this is integral calculus. Memorize it (at least until the test)."
Unschooling hears a kid say they want to make a robot, then gets excited and suggests a PID controller. The kid wants to make one, so they get necessarily are introduced to the I part. They seek it out. They want to learn it.
It'd be a mistake to interpret "we only do what they are interested in" as "we stay within their filter bubble." Unschooling gets rid of the bubble and allows everything as a target in the pursuit of knowledge.
The I in PID is referring to a pretty simple arithmetic sum inside of a control loop. Around 30 lines of simple C.
The original post is presumably referring to symbolic integral calculus, perhaps in a multivariable context if we're referring to partial DEs.
The level of rigor and complexity here is a couple orders of magnitude difference. I think there's still a case to be made for autodidaction of higher mathematics (it was certainly the path I went down), but I think unschooling is probably not best for most folks.
This nitpick is fair. My kids are pretty young still. 30 lines of C is not simple for them without help. 30 lines of C wasn’t simple for the employees of the schools I went to either, who were baffled by the technology that was shoved at them. My “computer class” teacher lamented that she only got stuck with the class because the rest of the faculty realized she had figured out how to use the mouse before anyone else. Simple or not, I would make a small bet that not a single faculty member in that district to this day knows what a PID controller even is, and a very large bet that no one at the time did. They provide a very standard education.
But yes, you are quite correct that a PID controller is not the only (or even most complete) application of integral calculous. The example was given as a pathway by which an unschooled child could become aware of a topic concurrent to an understanding of its importance. By no means did I intend to imply that the education should stop there. There's also nothing stopping an unschooled child from pursuing higher education or degree. Indeed, already knowing how to learn seems to place them at an advantage in such a case.
You have a decent argument, but your example of calculus is about the worst you could have picked. I got 99% in calculus at UBC in the first semester, and then I set the ridiculous goal of beating that in the second. I did get my 100%, but what a waste of time. It’s never been useful to me as a software engineer, what I remember is dangerous, and the opportunity cost of spending all that time on it was high.
I plan to unschool my kids one day, and I won’t try to force them to learn calculus. Some ground rules are necessary to get some breadth of education, but otherwise I’d rather nurture their natural curiosity and motivation than stifle it.
My own education in software and computers is basically unschooling. It was fun, and I quickly surpassed my peers and went on to have a great career. I’m only 20 years in, but the difference in motivation and outcome is compelling.
> You have a decent argument, but your example of calculus is about the worst you could have picked.
> I got 99% in calculus at UBC in the first semester, and then I set the ridiculous goal of beating that in the second. I did get my 100%, but what a waste of time.
Huh. Of all examples you could choose, you picked one where you were already in college, and specifically you pointed out how you got 99% in one university class and decided why not get 100% in another. And then you felt that the extra gain of 1% wasn't worth your efforts.
• For most families, by the time your child is ready to learn Calculus with a private tutor or yourself, hopefully you should be very well attuned and be able to have a sophisticated conversation with them about what they're interested in. Of course if your child is learning Calculus at a very early age then you're going to have a very different situation than nearly all other families, whether schooled or unschooled.
• Even in your example, it sounds like doing Calculus early would not be a bad choice. Since you don't think Calculus was profitable, why not fulfill those early reqs and instead take classes on what you really enjoy, esp. since classes are so expensive? This is a well known strategy.
I think calculus has very limited utility these days. Rather learn something else. The problem is not the extra effort for that 1%, the problem was the wasted effort overall.
I’m homeschooled, I found college pointless, and I dropped out and made my own way in the world. My brother did the same. We’re both reasonably successful today. I’m understandably skeptical of the educational system.
However, my unschooled child loves maths and has...and much more...he's now doing maths at uni. He's also so deep into the philosophy world that my mind hurts just reading the titles of the books he buys.
I wish I had the encouragement and freedom to explore without judgement when I was that age.
That's one data point. I definitely wouldn't have said yes. I didn't even think math would still be useful today(And in fact, it mostly isn't for non-STEM and non-business people).
I didn't know getting a degree would be anything I'd ever want, self taught programmers seemed to do better back then.
I was not in any place to predict the future, nor was I ever one of those people strongly motivated by ideas and abstractions for their own sake.
This is the part that’s scary due to selective bias. I had no clue whatsoever about most things I learnt in school until I uhmm learned them.
If I were given a choice whether to spend hours learning integral calculus or partial differential equations, I’d have most certainly said no! But, at the end of it I realised they were the foundations for something greater - projectile calculations with integral calculus.
Education teaches one to think. Some level of wild walks in the subject is necessary in my opinion.